Category: Blog posts

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What will change in EU rural development policies after 2013?

The Commission’s draft rural development regulation in its CAP post-2013 package has attracted much less attention than the direct payments and single common market organisation regulations. But while the rural development regulation has given rise to fewer controversies, there will be changes in the ways rural development programmes are implemented and managed.
These changes were outlined and discussed in the presentation by Francesco Mantino (INEA, Italy) on the EU’s new rural development policy after 2013 given as part of the session on the state of the CAP reform negotiations at the annual conference of the Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics in Parma.
Mantino’s presentation focuses on four elements:
• The main changes in the regulations concerning rural development (and cohesion) policies
• The state of the art in the trilogue negotiations
• The financial and institutional factors influencing the design of future rural development programmes
• Some preliminary discussion of policy strategies in some selected EU countries (France, Spain and Italy) and factors likely to influence success or failure.… Read the rest

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Where stand the CAP reform negotiations?

Last week I participated in a session on the state of the CAP reform negotiations at the annual conference of the Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics in Parma.
There were four presentations in the session, including an overview of the state of play in the negotiations by Giovanni Anania; a review of the CAP greening proposals by Jean-Christophe Bureau; an examination of the proposed changes in the rural development regulation by Francesco Mantino; and a discussion of how co-decision is influencing the outcome of these negotiations by myself.
Because the presentations might be of more general interest, with the permission of the presenters I plan to link to them over the next few days. This post links to the presentations of Giovanni Anania and Jean-Christophe Bureau.
Giovanni Anania’s (University of Calabria) presentation here in his well-known technicolour style is in two parts. The first part consists of the actual presentation (time was short, so the number of slides which could be covered was limited).… Read the rest

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Wasting money on young farmers?

This post first appeared in the IIEA EnvironmentNexus blog.

One of the issues on the CAP reform agenda discussed at the last Agricultural Council meeting was whether the proposed young farmers’ payment in Pillar 1 should be a voluntary option for member states or not. The Council is arguing for a voluntary payment. Both the Commission and Parliament argue, on the contrary, that the payment should be mandatory.

Making this a mandatory payment could imply a three- to four-fold increase in CAP expenditure on young farmers. One might assume that such a substantial increase in expenditure would be justified by well-founded evidence of substantial gains in either generational renewal or farm productivity.

In fact, in proposing a general top-up of direct payments for young farmers in Pillar 1 the Commission ignores the advice of its own evaluations of assistance to young farmers. Despite the high profile campaign by CEJA, the European Council of Young Farmers, this payment is the wrong instrument addressing the wrong problem.… Read the rest

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Challenges of implementing networking and governance mechanisms in the EIP

This guest post is written by Doris Marquardt, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Regional Development and Location Management, EURAC, Bolzano, Italy.

The setting-up of the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) ‘Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability’ as a new instrument under the rural development pillar in the next funding period has – in comparison to other elements in this CAP reform – so far not been the subject of contentious debate.
According to the draft regulation, the EIP is seen as a driver for innovation in the primary and food sectors. Added-value creation is expected by linking researchers and practitioners, promoting the transfer of new approaches into practice, informing the science community about research needs that matter “on the ground”, and by focussing existing policies on innovation. It is intended that the EIP will help build a competitive primary sector that secures sustainable global food and raw material availability. Dissemination of results (on innovation) and EU-wide networking should lead to gains for the sector as a whole.… Read the rest

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EU to ban reusable olive oil bottles in restaurants

Olive oil marketing regulations are at the centre of a political storm in the UK following newspaper reports that the EU Commission proposes to ban the use of olive oil jugs and dipping bowls in restaurants from 1 January 2014 (see, for example, the Daily Telegraph and Guardian reports).
The proposal is reminiscent of EU rules preventing the sale of crooked cucumbers (repealed in 2009). Apart from the substantive issues around the merits or otherwise of the proposal itself, the issue throws light on the working of the EU’s comitology system as well as raising questions about the balance between maintaining uniform conditions of competition within the EU while also respecting the principle of subsidiarity.
The proposal is found in a draft Commission implementing regulation amending an earlier implementing regulation on the marketing of olive oil in the Community. Part of the background to this regulation is the evidence of extensive fraud in the marketing of olive oil – olive oil is reputed to be the most adulterated agricultural product in the EU (see this interview with Tom Mueller in the New Yorker based on his book Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil).… Read the rest

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A race against time

Two important meetings as part of the process of agreeing a CAP reform took place earlier this week – the Agricultural Council on Monday and the Ecofin Council on Tuesday. The Agricultural Council meeting was notable for the success of the Irish Presidency in getting agreement on a compromise mandate on the Common Fisheries Policy reform after 36 hours of negotiations which it is hoped will be the basis for a political agreement with the Parliament before the end of the Irish Presidency in June.
We are not yet at the same point with the CAP reform dossier (see this recent update to the Irish Parliament by Simon Coveney, the Irish Minister representing the Council in the trilogue negotiations and this view from Mairead McGuinness, one of the shadow rapporteurs in the European Parliament). Both the Irish Presidency and the Agriculture Commissioner continue to make bullish pronouncements (as indeed they must) that an overall CAP package also acceptable to the European Parliament negotiators will be agreed at the next Agricultural Council in June.… Read the rest

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A short bibliography on CAP greening

As this was a relatively quiet week for news on CAP reform, I thought it might be useful to gather together in one place some references to the debate that has taken place on CAP greening since the publication of the Commission’s proposals in October 2011. This remains one of the knottiest issues to resolve in the CAP trilogues. These papers provide a guide to the general issues in this debate. There is also an emerging literature which attempts to estimate the impact for particular regions and farming systems of implementing the greening measures which I do not cover here. The papers are presented in rough chronological order and include a number of my own contributions so there is a certain amount of repetition.
Alan Matthews, Environmental Public Goods in the New CAP: Impact of Greening Proposals and Possible Alternatives, 2012, Brussels, European Parliament.
This note prepared for the European Parliament’s COMAGRI discusses the greening component of direct payments in the Commission’s legislative proposals of October 2011 for the Common Agricultural Policy in the period after 2013.… Read the rest

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MFF negotiations blown off course as European Parliament plays poker

Last week (Monday 22 April) the General Affairs Council (GAC) gave ‘guidance’ to the Irish Presidency for the negotiations with the European Parliament on concluding the MFF negotiations. The Irish Presidency’s objective is to reach agreement with the Parliament on the MFF by the end of June and to translate the overall MFF agreement into legal texts.
According to the conclusions of the meeting:

Ministers supported the presidency’s efforts to find a compromise with the European Parliament on the next MFF in a timely manner. Ministers expressed their willingness to discuss the four key elements of the European Parliament’s resolution (flexibility, revision, own resources and unity of the budget). Some ministers also stressed that substantial elements of the Parliament’s demands had already been agreed by the European Council in February, in particular as regards flexibility.

More than two months have passed since the European Council agreed its proposal on 8 February, and the Presidency was anxious to lose no more time.… Read the rest

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What farmers should do to qualify for the new CAP green payment

This post originally appeared on the Environment Nexus website.

The trilogue process between the Council, the Parliament and the Commission on the new CAP regulations has now started. Over thirty meetings are scheduled to take place between now and end-June with a view to reaching a political agreement on the four main CAP regulations proposed by the Commission (direct payments, rural development, the single CMO, and the horizontal regulation).

The proposed greening of Pillar 1 payments is one of the key elements in the direct payments regulation. In their responses to the Commission’s proposal both the Council and the Parliament have moved to dilute considerably the impact of the three greening measures proposed by the Commission. The Council’s position on greening following the March 2013 Council meeting is well summarised by this post on the IEEP CAP2020 blog.

Although there is considerable convergence of views between the Council and the Parliament on the greening amendments they put forward to the Commission’s proposal, one area where a significant gap has opened up following the Parliament’s plenary vote concerns the possible role for equivalent measures.… Read the rest

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CAP reform uncertainty and the market for entitlements

One little-emphasised feature of the current negotiations on CAP reform is that the rules for eligibility for payments under the new basic payment scheme (and thus also the other proposed layers of Pillar 1 direct payments such as the green payment, young farmer’s payment, area of natural constraints payment and redistributive payment where these are adopted) are in a state of flux. New amendments and modifications continue to be introduced at successive stages of the negotiation process. This uncertainty is reflected in the market for Single Farm Payment (SFP) entitlements and the prices farmers are willing to pay for entitlements where they become available.
The Commission’s original proposal was that farmers would receive entitlements based on the number of eligible hectares declared in 2014 (Article 21 of the direct payment regulation). I have previously discussed how the requirement for an eligible farmer to have received a payment (and thus have activated at least one entitlement) in 2011 was introduced into the Commission’s October 2011 proposals at the last minute.… Read the rest